Each Silken Strand
by Wilona Riva
Summary: Using two of Carl Sandburg's poems, Maddie and Danny grow closer together after Maddie accidentally discovers Danny's secret.
1. Ahead and Beyond

Each Silken Strand

By: Wilona Riva

Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom or Carl Sandburg's "From: The People, Yes"

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**Ahead and Beyond**

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**"I love you," said a great mother.**

**"I love you for what you are**

**Knowing so well what you are."**

"Danny, have you seen your father's...?" Maddie poked her head in the doorway to her son's bedroom, only to be greeted by a blinding flash of light.

Her arm fell limply to her side.

The ghost of her son stared back at her in fright. "Oh, no," he moaned.

Before she could move, he vanished from her sight.

"Danny?" Maddie whispered, her body too shocked to move.

**"And I love you more yet, child,**

**Deeper yet than ever, child,**

**For what you are going to be."**

"That sucks," Tucker commented, fiddling with the buttons on his PDA. "But maybe it happened for a reason."

"Quit playing with that!" Sam snapped at him, throwing the PDA out the window.

"Hey, I had two payments left on that baby!" Tucker yelped, watching helplessly as it smashed into bits on the concrete below.

Danny sighed, floating upside down on the ceiling. "What reason?" he asked, returning to the topic at hand.

Sam paused in the act of braining Tucker with a pillow and blushed. "Sorry," she apologized, the wheels in her head turning. "Your mother has over twenty years of studying parapsychology, gaining knowledge, and training skills you could learn from her, Danny. An enemy you might have to fight someday may require the skills your mother can impart to you; it might save your life, and ours."

"In other words, dude, go home and face the music," Tucker replied, producing a new PDA from his knapsack.

"How many of those things do you have in there?" Sam sarcastically commented, as she yanked the book bag from him. "Go home, Danny. Keep us posted."

Danny sighed.

**"Knowing so well you are going far,**

**Knowing your great works are ahead."**

His mother was caressing a picture of him taken when he was only six years old, showing the gap in his newly lost front teeth.

"Danny..."

A slight breeze fluttered the curtains and signalled the drop in temperature. She looked up to see Phantom smiling sadly down at her. "Mom, I..."

"Just answer one question, Danny," Maddie cut him off. "Are you dead?"

"Half," he mumbled. "The ghosts call me a halfa."

Maddie nodded.

Danny shifted back to his human form, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. When he opened his eyes, he looked directly into his mother's, and began to recount the story of his translation to walking the line between this life and the next.

Maddie sat back and listened.

**"Ahead and beyond,**

**Yonder and far over yet."**


	2. Cross Play of Loves

Each Silken Strand

By: Wilona Riva

Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom or the poem used within.

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**Cross Play of Loves**

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Author's Note: This is one of Carl Sandburg's Chicago poems, "Choices".

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**THEY offer you many things, I a few. **

"So, now what are we going to do?" Danny asked his mother. "We certainly can't go on like this, with you hating one half of me. And if you were to go soft, Dad would get suspicious."

"I notice you didn't mention your sister," his mother wryly replied.

"She already knows," he said, looking away.

"That explains quite a bit," she answered. "I can tell you what we are going to do though."

"What?" Danny asked warily.

**Moonlight on the play of fountains at night With water sparkling a drowsy monotone,**

"I agreed," Danny said, shoveling a spoon of cornflakes in his mouth. After chewing and swallowing, he continued, "Sam and Tucker pointed out that Mom has a lot she can teach me."

"I find that highly disturbing," his sister commented, after taking a sip of orange juice. "How do you know she won't try and dissect you? Or tell Dad?"

"I don't," Danny replied. "All I can do is trust her. She did say it was just a few harmless tests."

Silence reigned at the breakfast table for a few moments.

Jazz sighed. "Alright, little brother, just be careful."

"I will, Jazz," he said, standing up. "And thanks."

**Bare-shouldered, smiling women and talk And a cross-play of loves and adulteries **

"They don't realize what he really is," Jack Fenton glared at the young adolescent females on the television fawning on the young half-ghost, who was trying to fend them off, particularly one Paulina Sanchez.

"He looks uncomfortable," Maddie absent-mindedly replied. She stood up. "I'm going to take the GAV and look for Danny, Jack. It's almost time for his curfew."

"I'll go with you, Mads," he offered.

"No, Jack," she told him. "You stay here. This is something I want to do by myself."

"Okay," he agreed, as the news announcer switched to the financial market's latest windfall. "Just be careful."

She smiled and pecked him on the cheek. "Thanks, Jack, for understanding."

**And a fear of death and a remembering of regrets: All this they offer you. **

"Thanks, Mom," Danny said, as he came running around a corner, in human form, once more.

"What brought you out to the skating rink tonight? I thought you hate skating," she asked, as he slid the door shut. The rabid fan girls had gone back inside once Phantom had vanished into the ground, ignoring Danny Fenton, who had reappeared almost as if by magic, which was the way she preferred it.

"I do," he replied, wincing as the pain in his shoulder. "It was an ectopuss. I took care of it fairly quickly."

"Danny, let me see," she said, turning to face him.

"No," he said, pulling away. "It's nothing, Mom. Just a little cut."

His mother pulled his shirt up over his head, causing him to yelp in surprise and pain. "My God, Danny!" she exclaimed, seeing the multiple scars, bruises and one heck of a laceration, which already appeared half healed. "Don't tell me that's nothing. I'm taking you home to get this cleaned up. And you are going to tell your father," she added, releasing him.

Danny tugged his shirt back down, face paling in alarm. "Do I have to?"

She looked at him sternly. "Yes."

He sighed and turned to look out the window. "Alright," he quietly muttered. "But if he tries to 'rip me apart molecule by molecule', this is on your head whatever I may do."

Maddie said nothing, expecting this sort of reply from her son. She started the car and slowly eased her way into traffic in the direction of FentonWorks.

**I come with: salt and bread a terrible job of work and tireless war; Come and have now: hunger, danger and hate.**


End file.
